Tag: Medrec

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MedRec: Innovating Blockchain for Healthcare Data Management

IT Media Lab’s MedRec is a blockchain-based healthcare data management solution

Their central focus is on the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). MedRec aims to give patients access to, and control over, their EMR while facilitating and motivating medical research.

The patient interface

MedRec User Interface

MedRec Patient Interface

MedRec provides a user-friendly interface for patients to access their EMR. The interface includes notifications of any updates to the EMR. MedRec also enables users to decide “when, and with whom, they share their data.” Patients will have the power to use the MedRec interface to grant a guardian, family member, new doctor or any other participant the rights to view their data. Furthermore, patients may share information regarding a specific subset of their EMR (such as data relating to a specific health condition) while keeping the rest of their EMR private. MedRec gives patients a high level of granular control over their data, and can even isolate individual fields for independent sharing or restricting.

MedRec as a “Database Gatekeeper”

MedRec does not store any actual medical records on their blockchain network. Rather, MedRec stores “aggregate data pointers” that only reference the medical records, which remain in their existing databases. These “pointers,” or references to the actual medical data, are at the heart of MedRec’s approach and are aggregated into patient-provider relationship units. As viewership permissions for the actual medical data change, these pointers and relationships get updated, allowing or restricting access to the medical data accordingly. The entire process operates through their “Database Gatekeeper layer.” MedRec maintains that its blockchain model, centered around their “Database Gatekeeper layer,” alleviates many common concerns that would otherwise arise without it. Perhaps most importantly, it allows providers to keep their existing databases and continue to use them as they do now. This not only makes participation in the MedRec network all the easier and affordable for providers, but may facilitate HIPAA compliance.

MedRec System Architecture

MedRec System Architecture. Image source: http://v2.pubpub.org/pub/medrec

Motivating medical research

The MedRec team maintains that the medical research that is essential for helping researchers and providers find new cures and treatments is greatly hampered by the present lack of access to sufficient medical data. Although some clinical trial and other data does “trickle through,” there is a pressing need for more data that is currently inaccessible.

MedRec hopes to provide a solution to this problem by introducing a “data economy.” In return for providing the “computational resources” that support the MedRec blockchain network, medical researchers and other participants will receive “census level, anonymized metadata” that is useful, presumably, for their research. Of course, patients and providers (“the data producers”) will have a say in how much of this metadata they release to the researchers and other participants (“the data consumers.”)

The future of a blockchain EMR

MedRec

MedRec plans to perform ongoing usability and feasibility testing of their system with both patients and providers. This process will involve partnering with local healthcare providers to test the efficiency of their prototype. Once ready, they intend to release their framework as open source software. However, they are firmly committed to the principle that to use the system is not to own the data.

Unlike most, if not all, of the other nascent blockchain healthcare projects, MedRec is not a company. Nonetheless, their ambitions are similar to a host of startup companies in this emerging space. In terms of their prospects for success, their affiliation with MIT certainly plays in their favor both in terms of instilling trust in participants and in terms of providing access to the university’s technical and human resources. Furthermore, their model’s Database Gatekeeper layer has a number of advantages, noted above, that might make them especially attractive to providers with cost, integration and regulatory concerns. It is perhaps more difficult to predict how providers and patients will respond to their model’s “data economy” approach, although it does appear to provide a genuine incentive to medical researchers.

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Review of Healthcare Startups focused on Blockchain

The revolutionary nature of blockchain technology in storing data and intellectual properties is not limited to the banking and credit card industries, not by a long shot. Health providers and insurers are moving to blockchain platforms aggressively; the inherently safe nature of blockchain creates a secure haven for data as sensitive as medical records and statistics.

Healthcare Startups focused on Blockchain

Medical records by their very nature are private and sensitive. As is medical research and technology. More and more, companies with security breaches and data theft are being held responsible for that data loss, the consequences can be financially devastating.

Enter blockchain.

blockchain is a technology that arose from the Bitcoin dissemination worldwide. While Bitcoin is both fascinating and unstable, the real take-away from Bitcoin was the system designed to guarantee the security of all Bitcoin transactions globally: blockchain.

How does blockchain work?

A simple explanation of how blockchain works is that whatever data or information you are storing is sent down a line of thousands (even millions) of nodes. Each separate node has a kernel or piece of the information needed to create the whole. No single node has enough information for a hacker or data breach to make any sense of. Pair with that “security in numbers” concept, the encryption of each node to protocols different from the next, and you have a system guaranteed to be safe

Health companies are sitting up and taking notice.

In the years 2016 alone, multiple healthcare companies have started with blockchain as their primary data protection platform.

MedRec, while still in development is a system that manages medical records in conjunction with the Ethereum blockchain. MedRec plans to manage and store medical data at the “census-level” of volume, making it both a research and clinical blockchain.

Aussie start-ups Brontech engineered a blockchain platform called Cyph. The main focus of Cyph is to create and maintain secure digital identities for healthcare providers sharing private information with their clients and patients.

 Guardtime and Estonian eHealth got together and created a blockchain platform designed to protect over one million patient’s records.

What to take away from blockchain technology?

It is an asset to the medical field at every level. Every day we hear of more sensitive data being hacked by by some nation state intent on getting their hands on private information. Companies are now being held accountable for their data losses and breaches. The health industry needs to implement blockchain tech to protect their masses of sensitive data as quickly as possible. Myriad start-ups are responding to that need with blockchain platforms and secure infrastructures.

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